On relationships after grad.

Well, here's my newest theory.

I feel that people tend to commit more to serious relationships and compromise more directly after graduation because of several reasons which I list below:

1) After graduation, you tend to meet less and less people just because of the lack of time you have juggling a job and a life.
2) Most of your friends are usually busy or in different cities or there is some sort of problem with getting together regularly.
3) One person's schedule is easier to handle than several people's schedules at once.
4) You become more lonely.

So basically what happens is that after grad, you meet less and less new people. You tend to hang around your own smaller group of friends from work or people you meet. University friends and high school friends are typically busy or far away. You usually lack history with your current 'new' group of friends and therefore feel that it is a 'shallower' friendship than the ones you experienced in university and high school, where you have much more time to be together.

At the same time, more and more of your friends are getting into serious relationships, you aren't getting any younger, and people (like parents or grandparents) suddenly treat every next person you date as the next potential candidate to help them get grandchildren (or great-grandchildren). Who said that peer pressure and support from family isn't important. All you need is love....ha!

Because of the lack of social and emotional connection you feel from your current group of friends (the new ones) and the detachment and missing emotional part from your old groups of friends (Uni and HS buddies), you want something to fill a void. Let's say there's a measure for emotional and social connection called a emosoc (trademarked. I want my name in a paper!). Like an equation, let's say your new group gives you only 1 emosoc per person. Your old group gives 2 emosoc per person (from past history and connection from experiences). Now, your new group tend to be smaller then the old crew because you're new.

So let's say 6 for the new group and 10 people for the old group. So now presently, you usually feel approximately 6*1 emosoc or 6 emosoc per day. In uni or HS, you usually feel 10*2 emosoc, or 20 emosoc. Because of how busy people are and stuff like that, in order to feel like you did in university and high school, you need either, 14 new friends, 7 old friends to hang around, or either enter a new very serious relationship that would provide the lack of 14 emosoc in your life. Usually 14 new friends or 7 old friends takes too much time to cultivate and they would rather dedicate time to a much deeper connection just because they don't have enough time. I think this is the drive that makes people compromise and settle. I don't think its because mainly people are scared that they're going be "crazy cat ladies" or "old farts". People aren't that long-sighted. They just feel lonely as they grow older and need a stronger and stronger relationship to fill that void.

This is all relative though. Because everyone has a different emosoc level that they're used to. And it is only usually after they move into a new place that they realize the relative difference. Usually though, I find that most people have a similar number of friends in their life. As soon as one friend usually come in to their life, another one becomes substantially less important. This also explains why some people, as soon as they are in a relationship, drop all their friends. Their emosoc levels have been met and usually can't support the extra links. Most people that I know usually don't change their emosoc levels much. It remains constant. What does seem to change is that as soon as you try to go into a bigger group of friends, you become more distant somehow. This is semi-understandable as you only have a certain number of hours you can dedicate to friends (You only have 24 hours/day after all).

Girls also don't seem to form shallow friendships as easily as guys, and therefore tend to feel lonelier. Hence, more clingy. Well, I guess that blows my 'requirements' out of the water. Oh well, here's to trying.

So anyways, that's my reasoning for why people seem to grow that much more serious after university. Apparently, that's the right age to get settled down and married. I think that's only because of this.